Local Group is a Dream Come True for Sick Children and Their Families

Swimming with dolphins or seeing snow for the first time, meeting Taylor Swift or having a superhero bedroom makeover – these are just a few of the dreams a team out of St. Petersburg regularly makes happen for children with life-threatening illnesses. 

For more than four decades, the Children’s Dream Fund has been making dreams come true for children right in our own backyard. Headquartered near Crescent Heights in St. Petersburg, the fund has served more than 3,500 children, ages 3 to 21, since its founding in 1981. “The people working in the children or young adult medical field, they’re dealing hands-on with some very tough situations,” Director of Dreams Lisa Hawk says. “We have this gift where we get to step in during that pain. Sometimes kids don’t have a long life ahead of them. But it is truly the best feeling in the world to know that they found us, and we can bring lasting memories and joy to the kids and their families.”

A child may be referred to the fund by anyone – medical professionals, family, friends, social workers. Once they’ve been referred, that’s when the dream process begins.

“We let them think about what they want to do, what could bring them joy during this time,” Executive Director Amanda Griffin says. “Some kids know right away. But some kids like to really, really absorb that dreaming process and think, ‘If I could do anything, what would it be?’ It’s almost like a healing element to be able to have that dreaming process.”

Children can dream up anything. As the organization puts it, they can dream “to be, to go, to have, or to meet” – to be a paleontologist, to go see snow, to have a shopping spree, to meet the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

After volunteering with the Children’s Miracle Network at Florida State University, St. Pete resident Griffin knew she wanted to continue fundraising and working with children after graduation. That’s when she began interning at the Children’s Dream Fund. During that summer, she worked closely with the Dream Coordinators, planning dreams from start to finish. Her favorite dream was planning a Disney trip for 4-year-old Jamie. 

“We had this beautiful party for her and celebrated her,” Griffin said. “I will never, ever forget how excited she was. She just wanted to be a princess for the day and meet Minnie and Mickey and really just be able to step out of her day-to-day treatments.”

The Children’s Dream Fund celebrates each child with a dream delivery party where their itinerary or gift is revealed. “We invite them to our dream house here in St. Pete,” Griffin said. “We decorate the room, put up balloons, have cake, give them a gift basket related to their dream or with their favorite things in it. They can invite anyone they want, and we all just get to celebrate them.”

Having grown up nearby in South Pasadena, Griffin said she has never thought of leaving St. Pete. “It’s literally the best place to live, and it keeps getting better all the time.” But when a child is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, she said it has a ripple effect on the community.

“It’s so hard on not only the child who is receiving the treatment and has the illness, but also the family because it affects everybody – siblings, parents, grandparents,” Griffin said. “When we’re able to provide joy for 200 kids every year, that is such a beautiful thing to be able to have a little pep in your step when you’re going through something so terrible.” 

Attesting to this, Hawk said she started at the Children’s Dream Fund because her own son was born with an illness. The support her family received from the community during his treatments was critical for them.

“We were always in and out of the hospital, watching him struggle for 12 years,” Hawk said. “Through that time, different organizations or people in the community would do maybe what they thought were small things to cheer us up, or to bring him some hope. From a parent perspective, we couldn’t fix his medical side, but we realized that the emotional and social support was more critical, honestly, than anything.”

To continue making children’s dreams a reality, the fund relies on monetary and in-kind donations, as well as volunteers, interns, and sponsors. “People would be very surprised to know how many children right here in our community are actually sick and receiving dreams,” Hawk said. “When people support any type of thing that we do, they’re supporting their own community. It could be a child three doors down from them that they’re helping. And that support, it really makes us feel like a small town even though we aren’t. We couldn’t do what we do without the community we live in.”

To learn more about the Children’s Dream Fund, visit childrensdreamfund.org.